Lee,

I see no one has responded to this. My thought is that the kingfisher was waiting for the fish to die. They are programmed to make sure it's dead before they swallow it, often beating it on a branch as well as keeping it out of the water, and its programming may have been a little excessive. Well, a lot excessive. I guess it flew away with the fish, or you got tired of watching.

Dennis

On Dec 29, 2011, at 8:35 AM, Lee Rentz wrote:

> I attached a curving branch to our Fawn Lake dock as a way to attract kingfishers, and it worked! They often use the branch as a resting place.
>
> Yesterday I had a kingfisher sitting atop the back rest of a bench on the same dock for at least half an hour. The interesting thing was, it had about a five inch fish crossways in its bill the whole time, and it sat there as if displaying the fish to the world (kind of like a human fisherman proudly grinning while holding up a big salmon for a photo). Any insights as to why the kingfisher did this? Was it displaying its fishing prowess to a potential mate? Was it waiting until it got hungry? Was it waiting until the fish died? If you have any ideas on this, you might post them to the forum so that we all might learn from the discussion.
>
> Lee Rentz
> lee at leerentz.com
> http://leerentz.wordpress.com (including a recent blog post about the Cascade Foxes that virtually every visitor to Mt. Rainier now sees; consider subscribing to the blog for automatic updates to your email box)._______________________________________________
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-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net